The world, but not the U.S., is talking about climate change

It was probably 15 years ago. I was sitting in my office off our 200-person newsroom, and a member of my staff stopped in for one of those relaxed, end-of-the-day conversations that I could never resist.

He wanted to talk about climate change; I previously had edited an environment and energy news service for years. Specifically, did I find it hard to balance the scientific consensus with the fractious political debate?

No.

I told him we covered the debate for what it was: a political argument that would determine whether we did anything about the facts. And while the facts undergo ceaseless revision and deepening, the reality of climate change was unrefuted in the scientific community. That reality framed our coverage decisions.

I mention this conversation because the nations of the world have sent delegates to Belem, Brazil, for the annual Conference of the Parties — COP30 in this case — to continue the global effort to address the ever-growing problem of climate change.

The United States did not send a delegation. The primary U.S. television news networks apparently did not send full teams to cover the conference, according to the Guardian.

The lack of U.S. interest mirrors the decline in climate coverage in recent years. According to Media Matters for America, network news — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox — coverage  of climate declined from 1,374 minutes in 2022 to 771 minutes in 2024

Further, MMA notes in a March 6 report, extreme weather events draw significant news coverage, but that coverage rarely links to climate change. According to MMA:

Despite extreme weather being a driver of broadcast climate coverage, climate change was only mentioned in a small percent of overall extreme weather reporting in 2024, which suggests a clear opportunity for broadcast networks to increase climate coverage by more consistently connecting the ways our warming planet is influencing extreme weather events.

Only 5% of corporate broadcast segments about Hurricane Milton connected the storm to global warming, while climate was mentioned in 2% of broadcast segments about the July wildfires in the Western U.S. and Canada. Hurricane Beryl saw a similar trend, with 6% of broadcast segments connecting the storm to climate change. The June extreme heat event, which affected large swaths of the continental United States, had the highest climate connection, with 16% of broadcast segments linking the heat wave to climate change.

Not surprisingly, both political parties have gone … quieter. According to the Washington Post:

A few years ago, climate change was everywhere. Democrats, buoyed by the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, talked constantly about the transition to clean energy and the threat of rising extreme weather events. In 2022, over 1,000 companies across the globe reported science-based climate targets — more than in the previous seven years combined. The world was still heady with energy from the landmark Paris agreement; countries were passing hundreds of climate laws every year amid a wave of climate marches and activism.

Now, all that has changed. Since the beginning of 2025, according to data analyzed by The Washington Post, Democrats have pulled back from talking about climate change. At the same time, nations and companies have been whittling down their goals, pulling back from their most ambitious plans to lower carbon emissions — or going silent on the issue entirely.

And the Post cites a different study on climate coverage that supports the trend noted in the MMA report:

It’s not just Democrats. Republicans are also talking less about climate, The Post’s analysis found, and so is the media. According to a project by the University of Colorado and a suite of other universities, global media coverage of climate change has been declining since 2021. In October 2021, news coverage of the issue peaked, with about 1,100 articles per month across newspapers in Africa, North America, Europe and Asia. In September 2025, the number had fallen to about 400. In the United States, coverage fell by almost two-thirds during that same period.

The Post points to the political atmosphere across the country:

According to Adam Jentleson, a veteran Democratic operative and the founder and president of the Searchlight Institute, Democrats are learning that direct focus and messaging on climate change doesn’t necessarily pay off. (In September, the Searchlight Institute urged Democrats to obey “the first rule about solving climate change: Don’t say climate change.”) Democratic voters care about climate change, he argued — but not enough to vote primarily on that issue.

The Biden administration was able to enact extraordinarily consequential legislation on both climate change and infrastructure, but it emphasized the economics over the environmental impact. And the success of Democrats in the recent elections has been attributed to their focus on affordability — pocketbook issues. Their reluctance to highlight climate change is understandable.

Of course, the official position of the Trump regime is that climate change is a hoax, and it has shut down a great deal of the fact-gathering and research that contradicts that view.

But the news media is under no obligation to accept the political calculations of public officials as their assignment editor. Whether we have the capability to properly measure it, climate change is still happening, and the cost — in human and economic terms — keeps going up.

That reality should still frame coverage decisions.